LD 1550 - An Act to End the Sale of Flavored Tobacco Products
Representative Meyer of Eliot has presented a new bill to ban all sales of flavored tobacco products. Moving forward, in the state of Maine, consumers will no longer be allowed to purchase any tobacco product with any flavoring other than authentic tobacco. What’s a tobacco product? Well, according to the FDA, “hookahs, dissolvables, smokeless tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, roll-your-own tobacco and rolling papers, pipe tobacco, and vaporizers, e-cigarettes and e-liquid.”
This would effectively end our ability to sell any e-liquid with a flavor. There would be no more fruit, no more menthol, no more candy, or cereal, or dessert flavors. All we would be left with is flavorless and tobacco flavored e-liquid. We would also be prohibited from selling flavored disposables and potentially be forbidden from selling flavored rolling papers as well.
This would affect us and every other retailer and this would affect any person who uses a form of flavored tobacco in Maine. This would affect you.
The bill was proposed to the Health and Human Services department and had a public hearing Friday May 7th that lasted more than six hours with testimonies both in support of and in opposition to the bill. The work session occurred Wednesday May 12th and the final vote was in favor of removing flavored products from the market.
The bill will have to also pass both the House and the Senate before passing. However, this is the farthest a flavor ban bill has ever travelled and there is a high likelihood that it will pass through unimpeded.
Governor Mills has already alluded to the bill passing as her newly proposed budget allocates $32 million to “replace lost revenue from ending the sale of flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes, cigars, and electronic cigarettes to curb tobacco use among Maine children.” What about the loss of revenue for these small businesses and their families? How many small businesses will be closed down due to this legislation passing? After so many have already closed during the pandemic and subsequent shutdown, how many more can we afford to lose? As a small business, we feel the loss of every local business like the loss of a friend, why is it so much easier for our government to let us go without a worry?
Prohibition has never worked in the past, why would we assume it would this time? Speakeasies were created because alcohol was banned, and illicit substances didn’t stop selling once they became contraband either. The United States has a history of constricting certain products and there is always a surge of illicit activity in response. Prohibiting flavored products won’t stop teens from getting their hands on these products, all this will do is create a mass black market for these items. We will see an uptick of “mixed in a bathtub” type e-liquids. Anyone looking to make a couple bucks will be combining random liquids, hoping to create an elixir they can sell, without knowing what they’re making.
If you will recall in 2019, there was an influx of people in the hospital, ill, from vaping THC carts that they bought off the street. Some of these people unfortunately even died. If this bill passes, there will be a future where the news will be reporting on more mysterious illnesses and unnecessary deaths due to people willing to try anything to get their hands on the products they want.
We need to act now before it’s too late. Before our freedom to choose taken away without a backwards glance. Make sure your voice is heard! Reach out to your representatives to remind them that we want the choice to choose the products that work for us. Not sure who your representatives are? Click here to find your representative and instructions for contacting them by email or phone here!